Targeting, Get Specific

Targeting, Get Specific

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. On today's episode, we're going to get specific about our targeting methods so that we can be more effective. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast on today's show, episode nine. Holy moly. I can't believe that we are on episode nine. It's pretty crazy to think that we've been through this for almost 10 episodes already. It's been just about one month to the day, actually, I'm recording this one month to the day from when I launched the Business development podcast, which was on February 6th.

And I just wanna say, Thank you so much. The reception that I've gotten from all of you who are listening is just next level and appreciative and I can't tell you how much I appreciate the kind words and the kind reviews that you guys have left me over the past weeks. Really, in this last week, I started getting quite a few reviews.

I know for a minute there, it wasn't really set up properly on the website to do it, so you guys were kind of having to go to Apple Podcast or Spotify and do it through there. But over the last week we've set it up properly so that you can just hop right on the website if you wanna leave me some kind words or some reviews.

And I can tell you they're extremely appreciated. I wanted to just take a minute before I started the show today to just give a big thank you to McKinley Highland of Maverick NDT Inspection, who came and did my very first guest episode for last episode, episode eight. McKinley. It was amazing and you're such a smart person and you had such valuable insight to deliver to the listeners.

And I just wanted to take a minute before we started this episode, today, episode nine, and just say thank you so much. And for those of you who are just getting this, maybe it's your first time tuning into the Business Development podcast. Please hop back. Listen to episode eight. I interview McKinley Highland of Maverick NDT Inspection, and he just gives some incredibly valuable insight and just motivation if you're on the fence about starting a business or if you're on the fence about anything.

And just thanks, McKinley. That was awesome. And you know, I, I don't think we could have done any better, so I really appreciate your effort on that. Thank you so much. I also wanted to just start this episode today by shouting out and saying, holy moly, we have just hit our very first milestone. We are at 500 downloads of the show.

I can't believe it. I can't believe that you guys have spent five, you know, roughly probably 350 cumulative hours listening to my voice

ramble on about business development. So I can tell you that I appreciate. Thank you so much for bringing me into your morning listening routines, your evening listening routines, or whenever you listen to me, and I just hope that I can continue to deliver value week after week after week.

And I promise that as long as I'm on here, I will be working to do that. And just a heads up to you, we're working right now. That was just our very first guest episode. I'm working right now on getting more guests. If you're a business owner, an entrepreneur or maybe a, a high level business development rep and you think you got some value to deliver to people, reach out to me.

Let me know. Let me know if you'd like to be a guest on the show. We are looking for guests and I would like to do at some point, probably a weekly guest episode so please reach out if if you're enjoying this show, if you're finding value in it and you think you might have some value to give back, feel free to reach out to me.

 We would love to have you on this show. Alright, so we are going to take a little bit of time today. I know we've kind of already talked about target lists and targeting clients, however, it's a very important, important topic, and I think that it can't hurt to just reiterate and maybe narrow down and get specific about our lead generation so that you are more effective in your targeting efforts and in your marketing efforts moving forward.

So we're gonna spend another day today just chatting about lead generation, about targeting. Getting specific about the way that we're targeting and who we're targeting. And hopefully we can really narrow down these target lists to people that are going to be high, high value prospects for you. That hopefully you're making a lot less phone calls cuz most of these phone calls are turning into we would love to meet with you. So let's get started. I've touched on this subject before but I just wanted to reiterate a few things. So let's get started. We talked last time kind of about qualification, and I just want to kind of start this episode today by just saying, qualify your target industries.

Remember, you cannot sell your product or service to somebody if they don't need it, and I think a lot of us kind of jump in and we think like, oh, well we all know these big companies. Maybe if we just market to them, there might be some opportunity while I, you know, I applaud you. Great job. You know, I, I love your ambition.

But remember, we need to get specific. You need to know whether or not these people need your services or not. So you're gonna need to do a little bit of research. Hopefully with your product or service. You have some experience in it, so you might already be able to qualify some, some companies and people, and that's a really, really great task.

But just remember, You cannot sell your product or service to somebody who does not need it or does not want it, that is a problem. And so you really need to qualify your, your your target industry. So a few questions that you can ask yourself before you contact a company or before you start creating your target list.

Does my product make sense here? Does my product make sense in this industry or to this company? Does this company maybe need to buy valves if they're not making engines? That sort of thing, right? Like we need to, we need to really qualify our companies to make sure that they need our product or service.

That's step one. You need to qualify your company, step two. Is your product wanted? That's the other side of it. You know, maybe you have a really great product, but you're trying to replace a product or service that frankly doesn't need to be replaced just yet. You know, it's tough to be ahead of your time sometimes in innovation because people like the status quo.

So when you're coming into a new company, usually you're competing against companies who do something really similar to you or have a product that's very similar to you. And challenging that product quo, it does work. But remember, you were always gonna be fighting an uphill battle if you're fighting against products or services that already exist or already utilized by the company, and maybe they already trust that company.

Remember when I talked before and I just said like, when we're, we're always calling and we're trying to get on that, on that vendor list, right? But remember, you are competing likely against four or five other companies that are already on that vendor list, that are already qualified, that have already done work for that client.

And that client has created a trust and a rapport in their product or service, and you are up against that. And so it's gonna take you a little bit of time. So just keep that in mind. If you got like a new product or service. So you're gonna be coming in with new innovation, or maybe you just have the same service and you're trying to get in the door.

Remember, you are always up against other people and it's gonna take you time and hopefully the ability to develop a little bit of a relationship, to get in that door. The next thing is, do they know your product or service? This, I'm just gonna kind of go back to what we're just talking about. If they don't know what your product or service is, if you got something that's so new, that's so innovative, maybe they jump on board.

But remember, a lot of people are adverse to change. So if you're coming in there with a brand new product or service idea and it hasn't really been tested in the market just yet, remember you're gonna run up against some resistance. And if there's already a market that is, or a product or service that is trusted, They, you were up against that, and that's gonna be a little bit challenging.

And once again, it's gonna take you some time to build that relationship with the customer to kind of show them that, yeah, you can trust me, you can trust in my product or service, and this is why this innovation is going to provide you benefit before they're necessarily gonna try it. , you need to figure out all industries that need your product.

So remember I talked about this in the target list section. You need to create target lists based on industry and location, right? What's the location that you wanna start at first? Your location you got, you can you . There's no better place to sell than where you are today. So if you're in Edmonton, if you're in Calgary, if you're in Toronto, You should be trying to start marketing in Edmonton, Calgary, in Toronto before you start branching out across, across the nation, cuz you're gonna be the most competitive where you are.

The next thing is you need to figure out who buys your product. We talked about this as well, remember. You know, it's easy to look at a company and say, well, scm, scm, or the buyers or, but remember, those are typically not the people buying your product. The people buying your product or service are typically the people either building the machines.

So we're talking about like, you know, whether that be plant managers, whether that be operations managers, whether that be business owners, in some cases, in much smaller companies. , but typically SCM kind of gets the word of, of, Hey, you need to look at this company, or we need to pre-qualify this company because we want to use them.

They're not typically the ones making those decisions. So it is important that we are, we are qualifying the right person that we're, we're figuring out doing the detective work to figure out who the right person is in the company to market to first. And that might take you a little bit of time. That might take you some phone calls, some questions.

Went in doubt, call the main line and just ask, you know what? I've done that plenty of times when I was working in the quality industry where when I was new and I just wasn't sure, I would just call the mainline and say, Hey, I'm selling this kind of product. Do you know who I might need to speak to? And typically they'll say, yeah, yeah, I know you need to speak to the president, John, or you need to speak to the VP of development,

Right? Or in, or in my case with quality, you know, you need to speak to the quality director or the quality managers. When you don't know, it never hurts to just pick up the phone, call the office and ask, cuz you would be surprised at how often people will step outta their way to help you. The next side is look at your marketing material.

So we talked about marketing material as well, and marketing material is very important. If you are targeting multiple industries, remember one size may not fit all. So what do I mean by that? You've created a brochure, you've created digital marketing material. Maybe you've created a really beautiful website cuz you guys are awesome and you're listening and you're building great, beautiful things and I'm proud of you.

But your website may not be targeted to the right industry. Yeah. So let's say that you are in Alberta and us people in Alberta. We love selling to oil and gas cuz oil and gas are our clients and they drive our province well. Oil and gas is great, however, that's not necessarily going to help you if your brochure is, is really, really niche towards the oil and gas sector.

We're talking about, you know, facility management, we're talking about pipelines, we're talking about, you know, maybe maintenance. Well that's great. But if it's all geared towards oil and gas, if you're trying, what if you're trying to market now to food manufacturing? Cuz your product or service also works in food manufacturing or your product and service works in in any type of manufacturing facility, your distribution or warehousing.

Well now we have a bit of a problem. What's the problem? Well, you're gonna send your brochure to the right person at the warehousing company or the distribution company or the food processing plant, and they're gonna look at this and they're gonna. Well, ABC company only works in oil and gas. We probably shouldn't look at them.

So you've been disqualified before you even started by not having the correct marketing material for the industry that you were after. So what is my piece of advice to this? Create a type of brochure that allows you to insert different industry cut sheets. What is a cut sheet? A cut sheet is a one pager or a two pager.

That just talks about what your services are for a specific industry. So let's say that you work in oil and gas, but you can also work in food processing. And let's say we, we can also work in pulp and paper. You would have a separate cut sheet for food processing for pulp and paper and for and for oil and gas.

And what they're going to do is they're going to specify, What services you can provide to that specific industry and why your product or service is a great option for that specific industry. And you're not going to get ruled out the next time that you're marketing to different places. Just remember to attach the correct cut sheets because I've made this mistake before and it sucks.

Make sure that you're attaching the correct cut sheets to the correct industry when you're marketing specific industries, and that's going to, that's going to make you much more formidable in your marketing endeavors. Okay. Create target lists by location and industry. We've already kind of ran over this.

Just remember that all of your target lists need to be created by location and industry. Your location best location is always where you're at. Industries are always what industries can you work at, and then what companies can you work at in your area that are in those specific industries. That's how you're gonna break that down.

Utilize your website, LinkedIn Company employees, your network. To find the correct contacts. So remember you got multiple options when you're trying to find the correct contacts. I talked about this when, in the last episode where we talked about lead generation, but just remember that you have lots of options to find the right people.

So let's say that you have tracked down and you know, I use quality a lot cause that's my background. Let's say that you, you're in, you're in quality. And you've tracked down the right person, you know that you need to get to the quality director or the quality manager of this company. Remember, if you don't know who that is and you're having trouble finding it, there's a lot of different avenues you can take.

And being a BD person, I've talked to it many times, is a little bit like being a detective. You have to have a little bit of detective qualities to help you out, and you can't just give up the first couple times that you try or, you're not gonna be successful. Sometimes it takes multiple avenues to get to where you need to go, and some of the ones that I would recommend, like I said, is check the website.

I can't tell you how many times that I've been struggling to find a contact for a company and I hop on the website and then there's a corporate directory, and boom, not only is the person that I need to talk to on that. But they also give the email or they also give the direct phone number. And guys, that just saves you all the trouble right there of having to kind of dig through.

LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is such a great resource, especially as you get further on in your use of it. Remember, LinkedIn is only as powerful as your contact list, right? So I talk about this regularly, we need to be adding our, our maximum limit of LinkedIn contacts every week. What is that? Well, I believe with LinkedIn it's a hundred contacts.

We're allowed to add a hundred contacts every week. And to all my business development people, business owners, anybody doing their own business development and marketing for their company, you need to take say a half hour, 45 minutes outta your day. And start adding the specific people that you need to target in various industries on your LinkedIn.

Add a hundred every single week and week. Over week, you're gonna get more access to more people and you're only gonna get stronger in your ability to find the people that you need. At this point, I have, I think about 12,200 contacts on my LinkedIn, and there's just about nobody that I can't get to.

When you get to that level, that over 10,000 mark, it just opens up this gigantic pool of people and it pretty much doesn't matter what industry I'm looking at, I can almost always find somebody who I can talk to to help me get in the right direction. So remember, LinkedIn is a tool. It takes, it takes some time to build that tool and you need to be building it every single week.

So make sure that you're adding your 100 people on a weekly basis. The next, sorry, the next one as well is that company employees. So company employees. So I talked about this earlier. If you're struggling to get to the right person, don't, don't hesitate to ask for help. Don't hesitate to call the mainline and just say, Hey Mr. or Miss receptionist. Thank you so much for taking my call today. I'm I'm struggling at the moment. I'm really trying to find the right contact in this company. I have this great product or service and I'm just not, not being able to reach the right person. Do you know who by chance, I, I should speak with?

and you would be surprised how often they will actually say, yeah, no, I, I think, let me do some digging. Let me ask around. They'll leave for five minutes. They'll ask like a few people and they'll come back and say, Hey, no, you need to speak to John in marketing, or You need to speak to John in scm, or you need to speak to John, the quality manager.

Do you want me to put you through and give you the contact information? And boom, suddenly you have, you have that contact information that you're trying to find, and then obviously your network. You're friends, your coworkers, right? You know, odds are pretty good. You've been in the, you've been in the business for a minute, you know, a few people.

And it never hurts to just ask, just ask some people. Are you guys, do you guys know by chance in this company who we should speak with? And you'd be surprised too, how how much your network knows. Your network is awesome. And I rely on my network regularly too, to just, just ask people, you know, what capital we are a network based business.

The reality is, is that, you know, my, my employees ask me for contact help, and sometimes I will ask them for contact help. And as a big group, we have access to so many people that utilizing the network is a very powerful tool for us, and it'll be a very powerful tool for you and your business as well.

Okay. Utilize soft touch techniques to make contacts so, All initial contacts should be soft touch. What is soft touch? Soft touch is like a digital, it's, it's a non-formal way of introducing yourself, right? So formal I consider like a formal email or a phone call. Those are pretty formal. What is not formal and not formal is an InMail through LinkedIn.

It's a message through LinkedIn. Maybe it's a message through any social platform you're using. Or maybe it's just a comment on one of their, one of their posts to just kind of let them know who you are, that you're interested in their company, and you know, you can use soft touch. We use Soft Touch quite regularly at Capital to make LinkedIn introductions for our clients at first, right?

When we're trying to make just those, those introductory messages. I'd love to just do a, a little LinkedIn introduction. Remember LinkedIn Less is more. Give yourself a nice short burst of, of introduction. Try to keep it, you know, 5, 6, 7 lines tops. And then just sign off with your name and maybe attach a brochure or something like that.

But just a nice short LinkedIn introduction. Soft touch goes a very long way. What's another way to do a soft touch? You can drop a brochure at the office. I'm a huge fan of dropping brochures. I used to drop brochures all the time. I guess. The cost can definitely be a little bit high, but the reality is, is that if you're just out there and let's say you got a client that you're struggling to find the information for, maybe on LinkedIn, you're not having much luck.

Just swing by their office. Drop a brochure. Grab the card. I talked about this before. Their cards are probably right on the front desk. The person you need to speak to, their card is probably right there. I , I can't tell you how many times I've walked into an office. There's a hundred cards sitting there and you can figure out, you know, how you, all the way from the president to the office workers.

So you can definitely utilize. A physical brochure drop as just a great way to break the ice, you know, leave the brochure for the right person, put their card on it, grab their card, and now you got their contact information for follow up and you know, they've received your brochure. Those are, those are excellent, excellent avenues to take.

The next one is obviously send your introductory email. It's another soft touch. It's a little more formal. If you can find their email that's assuming, let's say you went to the office, you grabbed the brochure. And now you have their email cuz you have their card. Another great opportunity just to do a quick formal introduction email of your company.

That's just a nice soft touch introduction. And then the last one is just ask for an introduction. You would be surprised how many people you know, probably know who you need to talk to and maybe even know them. And just asking sometimes like, Hey, I, I heard you're working with John at a ABC company.

Do you mind just giving me a quick introduction? And you'd be surprised at how effective that can be, especially if, if John and Joe at a ABC company have a great relationship already. For him to just to give you just a quick recommendation. Hey, have you heard of, of my, my my friend here at Company 1 23?

I think they can help you at company abc. Why don't you just reach out to him and see if you guys can line up a quick introduction email or or a quick lunch. It's incredibly effective. Asking for an introduction especially if you know somebody who knows them, is a very, very effective way to get the meeting that you're after.

Update info in your CRM to create, create long digital industries lists for the future. So now that we've created that target list, you know, you know who to speak with, you may even sent in that LinkedIn introduction. Make sure, make sure that you are utilizing your crm. If you're wondering how to utilize the crm, go back to my episode on CRMs.

It's very, very detailed. It'll explain my process and the way that I like to utilize it. But what you wanna do is whenever you're .Making these soft touch introductions, you need to make sure that you're putting them into that, that LinkedIn digital introduction stage of your crm, because they are going to be future contacted list people that you are gonna reach out to on a weekly basis to get the meetings that you're after.

So you gotta make sure that you are utilizing your CRMs. So, Make sure that if you are doing these soft touches, you've got the target list, you've done all this work. When you were sending those introduction emails, that you were also updating your CRM to make you more effective in the future. What are some other ways to generate new leads?

This is kind of the ways that I've went over kind of before in my CRM section as well as my lead generation. But what are some other ways, maybe just some, you know, outside the box ways that you can do this. Well, some of the way, other ways that you can generate some new leads are you can ask your customers for referral.

Who better knows your service than your customers, and who better knows other customers in the industry than your customers? Believe me, they know. They know a lot of people that can utilize your services. So it never hurts if you're in a meeting with your customer and they're happy and you got a good relationship just to say, Hey John, do you know anyone else who might need this industry?

Would you be willing to gimme an introduction? That's a huge, huge in to your next client. Maintain a good website and show some feedback and reviews on your services. We talked about this before, your website's, your face, your website is the most important thing your company has. It really is. It's the, it's the image.

It's your sky rise in the 21st century. So make sure that your website is excellent. It's a very great representing representation of you and your company. It's very visually appealing and if you can show some reviews or some feedback on your services, also huge. We live in a time where reviews are incredibly important and relied upon, attend, expo's and exhibits.

Well, yeah. Let's say that you, you have like a company, you provide like a really important service. Why aren't you attending, you know, trade shows that are for your industry? Why aren't you attending expos? And I'm not necessarily saying attend them as an exhibitor. Hear me out. I regularly attend Expo's as just a visitor for marketing purpose.

And what I do is I run through, I figure out what companies I'm not working with. Maybe there's some new ones in here that are, that are interesting. Not only that, they have all the business cards for the people you need to talk to. So you can just walk up to a booth and say, Hey, this company's super interesting.

We do this. You have the contact for quality, or do you have the contact for the operations guy? Yeah, here it is. They'll just give it to you. And so you can use it as this really, really great fishing opportunity where, you know, maybe you don't know what you're going there for, but I think you'll find by the time you leave that expo, you're gonna leave with five or six business cards to companies that could be future clients of yours.

So, you can definitely use them to either exhibit or to visit, but they are both they're both gonna put money in your pocket if you utilize 'em correctly. Utilize AI or, or a social media creator to create, to create posts and create that that online web presence. So obviously I talk about passive marketing.

I'm a little bit hard on it at times, but what is passive marketing excellent for? Brand recognition, brand recognition. If you are a newer company, heck, if, even if you're not a newer company, It's very likely there are people in the next city who don't know who you are. And so spending a little bit of money and time on social media to create a good brand recognition presence is going to truly help you move to the next level.

And the way that I like to do this is just a weekly post. So I'm, no, it's not much to ask, especially for utilizing an AI system. You can create together. You can create an AI post. Very quickly, probably within about 15, 20 minutes that's got a good message that represents your brand well. And yeah, you can do that 15, 20 minutes a week and you can have that post out there and, and start creating that brand recognition for your business.

Attend networking events within your industry. So here's another option, right? There's lots of industry events, right? Like just depends on what you're in, whether you're in mining industry, oil and gas, you know, every year, you know, you got the oil and gas expo, you got all sorts of different networking events that pop up through the year.

And another great thing that that happens probably in your city as you likely have a local Chamber of Commerce and chamber of Commerce, typically have many networking events because that's kind of what they're all about. They're about uniting local business. And so, you know, attending these, these networking events and just kind of pitching your product, you're asking the chambers for help to market your product is a really, really great way to get your name out there and a great way to market yourself across to different industries and, and across to different companies who can use your services.

Okay, well that pretty much wraps it up for today. So in closing. There are many ways to generate leads. Just make sure you are being consistent in your practices and you will find success. Guys, the most important thing is repetition and consistency. If you are utilizing a format to create good targets and high quality targets, and then you're inputting them into your CRM on a weekly basis, and you're being consistent with it week over week after, or week over week, and then also maybe as you switch into new industries, you're, you're still utilizing the same process.

It will be effective for you. It will be effective for you because consistency is the most important thing in all of business development. You just need to make sure that you are doing it repetitively. That is the challenge. Just stick with it. Stick with it, and I guarantee you that you will find the results you're looking for.

All right. You have been listening to the Business Development Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today for episode nine. It's been an absolute pleasure to host this episode for you. If you have found value in the content today, please please come on over and like, and subscribe to the show.

Leave me a rating. Leave me a review. Let me know how I'm doing if you have any questions. Heck, if you're if you're a new business owner or no existing one, it's just you might have a question or two for a BD guy and just wants a little bit of advice. Please, shoot me your questions, podcast@capitalbd.ca

that's podcast@capitalbd.ca. Shoot me some questions and I would be happy to answer some of them on the show as we move forward. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Have an excellent day.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The. Brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.